English, solid and veneered mahogany, ca. 1760 78/431

A mahogany hall seat consisting of scrolling X-frames at front and back, joined to each other by a waisted H-stretcher, and supporting a dished seat, veneered in mahogany, and painted in the centre with a crest -- a cat passant argent -- in an oval medallion. The X-frames end in scrolls at the top and have plinthed pad feet.
The seat is made of thin oak boards grained front to back (probably two boards, the join concealed as described below), which are framed by four thicker lengths of mahogany (c. 3/4 inch thick) mitred together at the four corners. The front and back lengths of mahogany are dished, the side lengths flat. This framed panel is strenghtened by further lengths of wood, c. 1/2 inch thick: four pieces glued to the underside of the oak boards, around the inside of the frame -- the side pieces butted up to the long front and back pieces -- and a central cross-piece likewise butted up to the front and back pieces. On this stool the front, back and cross-pieces may be low-grade mahogany, the left piece oak (but it is extensively worm-holed) and the right piece beech (also very worm-eaten); but this is difficult to discern through the stain. The mahogany outer frame has a simple quadrant moulding carved at the outside top edge, and a further step is formed by the sheet of veneer (grained side-to-side) laid over the whole. (The veneer on top and the cross-piece underneath conceal the likely join in the oak seat panel.)
Each of the front and back X-frames is formed of two diagonal (and diagonally grained) S-shaped elements, half-lapped to each other at the crossing. The joint is partly covered by the applied leaf-carving at the centre. Each leg tapers slightly towards the bottom, but is stepped out to full section at the foot (which is integral with the leg, not planted on).
The H-stretcher comprises a short central bar (laterally grained) tenoned to the long waisted rails, which in turn are tenoned to the legs of each X-frame. The X-frames are then screwed up to the seat at each corner, just inboard of each end-scroll. At the sides of each seat, underneath, two near-cylinders of mahogany, of the same diameter as the end-scrolls, are fitted in between the front and back frames and secured by screws driven in from front and back. The screws are slightly recessed and now stopped with a wax(?) filler. They were probably concealed originally by a turned roundel applied on top, although this stool does not show the same traces of such roundels as W.22A-1935 (in colouring and toothing-plane marks).
There are four screw(?)-holes in the underside of the seat -- two in each of the front and back reinforcements, each pair 7½--8 inches apart. These were probably introduced in securing carriage-battens.
This stool would appear to have suffered a major accident (caused by someone standing on it?): there are long splits near both the front and back edges of the seat, a break in the central joint of the back X-frame (at bottom left), and a split (not right through) in the front X-frame at the joint with the front left extension of the H-stretcher. The front split in the seat is repaired with two screws on the front face (each just inboard of the point of contact with the X-frame), and the back split with two wire(?) nails (one near the middle and one in the right half). Both the front and the back X-frame are re-secured with a wax-filled(?) screw, that at the front below centre, that at the back above centre. The back X-frame is also repaired with a large curved iron plate, c. 8-3/4 inches wide, screwed to the lower half of the frame, at and below the crossing.
Four further iron plates are screwed to the underside of the H-stretcher and to the inside face of the adjacent leg; these are bent to fit the angle, with a long (6--7½-inch) section under the stretcher and a short (3/4-inch) end turned down to screw up to the leg. The back left plate replaces an earlier fitting doubtless serving the same purpose (three empty screw-holes are visible, and others doubtless concealed by the present plate).
Finally, a thin brass plate is screwed to the inner face of the front X-frame where it has split at the joint with the H-stretcher.
There are also splits in both the veneer (laterally grained) and the oak support (front-to-back grained) of the seat -- presumably from environmental causes.
Some of the applied carving is missing on both X-frames: on the front (so designated by reference to the painted crest), the four scrolling leaf-tips at each outer corner and three of the four inner leaf-tips (the top right one survives); on the back all four outer scrolling leaf-tips and the two lower inner leaf-tips.
The whole is coated in a shellac polish, especially thick on the seat. The underside of the seat has a brown (umber?) stain, which largely obscures the grain of the reinforcing elements (see above).
Both left and right reinforcements under the seat are very worm-eaten, the right reinforcement now crumbling at the inner edge; there are also a few worm-holes at each end of the back reinforcement.

Presented by Lucy Violet Bouverie-Pusey

This stool and the other two en suite, which bear the crest of the Pusey family, were given to the Museum by (Mrs) Lucy Violet Bouverie-Pusey, who stated that they 'came from Pusey House Berks -- the house of the Puseys having been there always'. They were presumably commissioned for the hall at Pusey House, built for John Allen Pusey to the designs of John Sanderson, ca. 1746--48. J. A. Pusey died childless in 1753, and the estate passed to his two sisters, Elizabeth Brotherton and Jane Pusey. On the death of Elizabeth, also childless, in 1757, the unmarried Jane Pusey chose as the eventual heir the Hon. Philip Bouverie, the nephew of her sister-in-law and a younger son of the 1st Lord Folkestone. Philip Bouverie-Pusey (as he became) came to live at Pusey House only in 1767, so it is unlikely that any furniture was commissioned for the house in the previous fourteen years. So these stools presumably either ante-date 1753 or post-date 1767.

1748-1753 or ca. 1767. The stools were probably made after the completion of Pusey House, in 1748, and before the death of John Allen Pusey in 1753. Stylistically they look slightly later -- perhaps ca. 1760 -- but the house was seemingly not much occupied after Pusey's death until the coming-of-age of his eventual heir, Philip Bouverie-Pusey, in 1767.

This stool, one of a set of three, was originally at Pusey House, Berkshire, which was designed by the architect John Sanderson and built for John Allen Pusey in 1746-1748. The stools may have been made for J. A. Pusey soon afterwards (he died in 1753). The original set was probably larger, and would have been used in the hall of the house, arranged around the walls. The seat of each stool is painted with the Pusey family crest, a cat passant argent - a signal to visitors of the family's long connection with Pusey, where they had lived since at least 1100.

The V&A also holds the famous Pusey Horn (Museum no. M.220-1938), which came from the same house, and is romantically supposed to have been given to William Pewse (or Pusey) by King Canute in 1015.

W.22B-1935